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Condé Nast Colonizes Lower Manhattan

Condé Nast employees say they are adapting to their new neighborhood quite nicely.Credit
Mike Segar/Reuters

A stylish visitor to Condé Nast’s new headquarters at 1 World Trade Center unwittingly kicked up a social media storm in August when she somehow got her Christian Louboutin stiletto wedged into the escalator, stopping the machinery dead in its tracks.

There it was, the abandoned shoe, at the top of the mechanical staircase, its spike heel lodged between steel treads, its telltale crimson sole visible to anyone who walked by. Katie Turrel, Condé Nast’s director of talent acquisition, took a picture of the wayward heel and posted it on Instagram.

The picture was irresistible Instagram and tabloid fodder because it suggested that the world’s most glamorous media company was out of place in a wind-swept, workaday neighborhood of Wall Street traders, federal employees and bus-tour crowds. If a Christian Louboutin heel could not make it to the 25th floor, home of Vogue, didn’t it follow that the glossy media empire and the fortresslike tower were a match made in real estate hell?

Appealing as it was, however, the image of the shoe did not convey the real story, Condé Nast writers and editors say. The nearly 3,000 women and men who work at the company’s 16 print magazines and 20 websites (occupying an estimated 1.2 million square feet, from the 20th to the 44th floor) are adapting to the neighborhood quite nicely, thank you, and the neighborhood is adapting to them.

Photo

Condé Nast Publications and 1 World Trade Center got off to a rocky start.Credit
Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

“I had to walk through 14 Elmos and 16 Cookie Monsters to get to the front door,” said David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, recalling the days when he had to navigate pedestrian plazas clogged with furry mascots and gawking tourists on his way to the previous headquarters, at 4 Times Square. “That was interesting. But I don’t miss it.”

Like lovers in a romantic comedy who seem to despise each other at first, Condé Nast Publications and 1 World Trade Center got off to a rocky start. First, there was an invasion of rats at Vogue. Then came complaints from staff members about the smell of popcorn wafting through the hallways. There were grumblings about the new cafeteria and the disappointing sushi.

The barricaded streets outside the 1,776-foot-tall building meant that cabs, Uber drivers and delivery trucks were forced to park blocks away. And editors fretted over what the new power-lunch spot would be now that the Lambs Club was a wearisome drive uptown. Anna Wintour, the artistic director of Condé Nast and editor in chief of Vogue, bemoaned the lack of a nearby Starbucks in an editor’s letter this year.

The expansive interior entrance at 1 World Trade Center, with its 55-foot-high lobby, struck newcomers as a rabbit warren of escalators and underground walkways. “I think I was late to work every day at first,” said Alison Roman, the former senior food editor for Bon Appétit, who left the magazine in August. “I’d get off the subway and say, ‘Where are we?’ ”

Some employees said the new place reminded them of the conglomerate headquarters in the 1997 sci-fi thriller “Gattaca.” Indeed, movie references abound to describe the building’s otherworldliness.

“It really felt like I was in an Antonioni movie,” said Bob Colacello, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, referring to Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian film director who made 1960s classics like “La Notte” and “Blow-Up.” “There are these vast empty spaces. Every now and then you see a person approaching.”

Mr. Colacello has gotten used to it, though, and said he is fond of the 35th-floor cafeteria with its views of the Statue of Liberty. “I’ve had friends from Europe ask for tours,” he said. “People are very curious.”

Initially, employees complained about the food, several staff members said; a Condé Nast representative acknowledged the complaints about meals prepared by Restaurant Associates.

But since early summer, staff members said, the fare is much improved. On a recent weekday the offerings included bowls of quinoa, pan-seared salmon, a raw food bar and baskets of peaches and pears. Starbucks coffee was available over by the cash registers, albeit in thermal tanks.

And a new lunch spot has emerged: the Palm. That’s not much of a surprise, given that the Palm co-owner Bruce Bozzi Jr. is the partner of Bryan Lourd, the managing director of Creative Artists Agency, who has broken bread with Ms. Wintour and the Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. The Vogue editor “comes in a lot,” said Kevin Gunn, the Palm’s general manager.

“Some of them want to be seen,” Mr. Gunn said of Condé Nast editors in general. “But a lot of them don’t.”

The Odeon, which defined the 1980s downtown mood and served “Saturday Night Live” cast members as well as Robert De Niro, Andy Warhol and Jay McInerney, is another go-to spot. “We get people from Details, Vanity Fair, Vogue and Bon Appétit,” said Judi Wong, a partner in the company that manages the Odeon. “And we’ve seen a resurgence of Condé Nast editors coming for dinner.”

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The expense-account crowd has also gravitated to the Smyth hotel, where Andrew Carmellini’s Little Park restaurant serves organic vegetables and line-caught fish. Those who are lower on the mastheads content themselves with the food court at the nearby Brookfield Place mall.

In a sign of the company’s embrace of its new territory, Condé Nast Traveler posted an article in May headlined “Where Condé Nast Editors Eat and Play in Lower Manhattan,” complete with recommendations for restaurants close to the tower. The Condé Nast Traveler editor in chief, Pilar Guzmán, said she favored the bar at the Smyth, while her Bon Appétit counterpart, Adam Rapoport, went with the Raccoon Lodge.

Working every day at ground zero was discombobulating at first for some of those whose offices or cubicles overlook the Twin Towers Memorial. The black pits are a daily reminder of 9/11, with tour buses regularly disgorging visitors who stare or mourn. And the plaza is often bleak in winter, when icy winds create snowdrifts, rendering it a canvas of charcoal and white.

“I didn’t have emotional ties like a lot of people,” said Ms. Roman, who did not live in New York in 2001. “For them, it was a more intense emotional experience.”

The building, constructed at an estimated cost of $4 billion, has a concrete core, blast-resistant walls, bombproof glass and a separate staircase for emergency workers, not to mention the constant surveillance of local and federal antiterrorism officers. The first Condé Nast employees to work at 1 World Trade Center started in November 2014; the last magazine to make the journey was The New Yorker, which moved in February.

Building security is tighter than it was at 4 Times Square — Condé Nast moved there in 1999 — making the quick delivery of packages all but impossible. Ms. Roman said food shipped from FreshDirect for photo shoots was barred from the front door. “That caused a huge kerfuffle,” she said.

But the rules are relaxed for the delivery and pickup of star editors. A Condé Nast spokesman said car services approved by Condé Nast are free to approach the entrance.

Whatever the discomforts, Condé Nast is faring better than Time Inc., which has recently begun its move to a nearby building at 225 Liberty Street. In the company’s heyday, editors at its magazines (Fortune, People, Sports Illustrated and, don’t forget, Life) luxuriated in private offices at the Time-Life Building, a 48-story skyscraper in Rockefeller Center made of green glass and stainless steel that opened in 1959 with furniture designed by Charles Eames.

Into the 1990s, Time Inc. editors supped at the Hemisphere Club, a members-only lunch spot. Afternoon cocktails were served from a rolling bar cart.

In the new headquarters, Time’s writers and editors will have to make do with cubicles. The Fortune editor Alan Murray, who is also taking a cubicle, said the number of offices at his magazine is being cut to three, from 43.

“I fully understand that some employees are going to miss their big, old offices,” said Joe Ripp, Time Inc.’s chief executive officer. He added that he hoped the new setup will prevent his employees “from writing those interminable three-page memos and walk down the hall and talk to someone.”

Jess Cagle, the editorial director of Entertainment Weekly and People, said his new office is so small that he is carting a lot of stuff to his home: a cowhide chair, a set of wineglasses and a vintage movie poster for the 1950 drama “The Damned Don’t Cry,” which starred Joan Crawford.

“If I found out Fortune’s creative director had an office and we didn’t, that would be a problem to talk about,” Mr. Cagle said. “A lot of nail-biting and hair-pulling is being done by people here.” In a pre-emptive maneuver, he has already joined the Equinox gym in the building, to make sure he has his own locker.

For Mr. Remnick, the move downtown represented a fresh start. From his 38th-floor office, he can see the boats zipping past the Battery, toward the open sea. “It’s enlivened the place,” he said.

Mr. Ripp is hoping for a similar renewal at Time Inc. “I’m quite sure there will be no rats or mice in our building,” he said with a laugh. “The landlord will be in my office the next morning.”

Correction: October 15, 2015
Because of an editing error, an article on Oct. 1 about the relocation of Condé Nast to 1 World Trade Center misstated the year that 4 Times Square, the company’s previous headquarters, opened. It was 1999, not 1991.

A version of this article appears in print on October 1, 2015, on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Condé Nast Colonizes Lower Manhattan. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe